A law aimed at ensuring future generations in Wales have at least the same quality of life as today lacks teeth and has a laughable budget, a committee heard.

The Senedd’s equality committee took evidence as part of follow-up scrutiny a decade on from the Welsh parliament passing the Well-being of Future Generations Act in 2015.

Labour’s Mick Antoniw warned the Act, which aims to put sustainable development at the heart of decision making, lacks impetus and risks being a "bureaucratic tick-box exercise”.

Mr Antoniw, who was involved in early stages of scrutiny of the then-bill, said: “It started off… as a sustainability bill until no one could actually define what they meant by sustainability… came up with the term future generations and… that might be seen to be equally nebulous.”

As well as describing the Act as vague, the former minister suggested Wales’ future generations commissioner has few – if any – powers to hold public bodies to account.

He said: “I always thought that was a mistake right from the beginning, [you] don’t give it proper teeth to actually have the impact that shifts decision making.”

Calvin Jones, an environmental economist, said the commissioner and his predecessor told him their only “big stick” is to “name and shame” which they are reluctant to do.

“As soon as you get the stick out, people take their eyes off the carrot,” he said.

Prof Jones, who left Cardiff University in May, suggested Audit Wales should have more of a role in holding public bodies to account in a similar way to their bookkeeping duties.

He warned of a major lack of funding for the commissioner’s office, describing the money allocated by the Welsh Government as akin to using a sticking plaster on the Titanic.

“Let’s remember we are trying to guide a £30bn public sector with a body which is funded to the tune of £1.6m per annum,” he told the committee.

“Now that is absolutely laughable.”

The academic called for a legal duty to ensure at least a 0.1 per cent “haircut” for every public body captured by the Act, generating a total of about £30m a year.

“Without that, any future government that wants to hobble the office will just not give it money,” he said.

Eleanor MacKillop, a research associate at the Wales Centre for Public Policy, raised concerns about institutional complexity, with corporate joint committees, public services boards, regional partnership boards, corporate safeguarding boards and councils in Wales.

Jenny Rathbone, who chairs the equality committee, asked how the Act affects people’s daily lives, suggesting public bodies have failed to grasp it as a means to drive change.

Giving evidence on 23 June , Prof Jones warned of a culture of “box ticking and backside covering” hampering innovation and transformation in the Welsh public sector.

He said: “We have consensus politics in Wales: it’s a consensus of 19 rabbits and a polar bear – the polar bear says what happens and all the rabbits say ‘yes sir, yes ma'am’.”